It is well-known to incorporate floor or wall covering into the design of business or residential uses in order to improve the aesthetics or alter the appearance of rooms. In addition to aesthetic concerns, floor, wall and ceiling coverings may also serve utilitarian purposes as well.
Over the years, many techniques for covering surfaces have been developed. Wallpaper and paneling are but a few examples. A wood surface has been found to be not only aesthetically pleasing, but very durable and low-maintenance. For this reason, many prefer wood covering because of its beauty, low-maintenance, and resistance to wear.
Assembly and installation of floor covering is often an arduous task. For example, unlike carpet or wallpaper, the wood covering required skill, precise measurement and specialized tools in order to install it correctly. Unlike carpet or wallpaper, wood flooring could be neither stretched nor folded in order to accommodate the dimensions of a room. Additionally, wood flooring, especially flooring of tile or planks, required precision fitting in order to prevent the occurrence of gaps or cracks which would affect the physical appearance, as well as the durability and wear-resistance of the covering. This was also true of laminated flooring which has become popular in recent years, including the so-called “glueless” floors which have edges framed with interlocking patterns. Such floors cannot be assembled by pushing the panels together in the same plane, but must be manipulated through a series of angular motions in a particular sequence to assemble the panels into a floor. Therefore, great care and skill are required to insure that the tiles and panels of the surface covering fit neatly and tightly together. This often proved to be an arduous task, as hundreds of tiles or panels were generally required in order to cover a desired surface.
In order to properly install a surface covering of the prior art, one was generally required to carefully install the covering, tile-by-tile, and generally tapping and/or nailing each tile into place, or gluing and adhering the newly-placed tile to the surface to be covered, as well as the previously-placed tile. With the so-called “glueless” floor, the planks required manipulation to assemble them and the floors have been known to fail at the joint since the interlocking patterns at the edges are relatively thin, being machined into these plank edges. Because numerous tiles or panels were often required to be placed, there was the omnipresent danger of one of the tiles or panels becoming unseated during installation, which often required an installer to re-do his work to replace the shifted tile or panel. Still further, temporary clamps or installation straps were required to maintain the panels in position until the glue dried. The present invention addresses these and many other problems of the prior art.